The Vulnerable Truth 3.0

Alright guys, I'm about to get a little serious with y'all for a minute.

I've posted before about weight-loss and my journey to get healthy. It has been an interesting process and honestly the best journey of my life. If you're unfamiliar with what I'm talking about here are parts ONE and TWO.


The picture on the left is from a year ago. The picture on the right is from last weekend.

The mental aspect of weight-loss is something that I've struggled with throughout this process. I still can't bring myself to workout in front of people or with people - even friends. However, despite the fact that I once blogged about 'why I don't run', I have started running. Everyday. Well, 5-6x per week. Honestly, it's therapeutic for me and I feel good when I'm done. Even though I'm running so often, I still can't run 'in front' of people - so I run down alley-ways. One time I went running at 2:00AM but my dad didn't like that, and suggested that I not do it anymore (even though he lives 6,000km away). Don't worry Dad, I still just run down all of the alleys in my neighborhood. Dad, I'm humoring you - for now.


I obviously instagramed about my 2AM run

When I run, I don't take music with me. No phone, no communication with the world, no music, nothing. Just me and my thoughts, and I love every second of it. When I'm working out at home, I need music to keep me motivated and keep me moving; but when I'm running, I need silence and to be left alone with my thoughts.

I do my best thinking when I run. I can clarify situations in my head and come up with perfect solutions to anything that's weighing on my mind. It's freeing, it's fabulous, and it's something that I NEVER expected.


I love this. It's my iPhone wallpaper so that I see it and remind myself of this every day.

Everyone gets motivated by different things. I was motivated by a healthier lifestyle. Sometimes people need to lose weight for an event: wedding, graduation, milestone birthday, heck even just the summer so they can have a bikini ready body. I, however, didn't really have any of that when I first started my journey. Sure, I'm a bridesmaid in a best friends wedding next summer - so I'd LOVE to look hot for that. Sure, I'm turning 25 in October, and I feel like I should look hot for my "quarter-life". However, what it all came down to was that I was sick of being fat. I as sick of being unhappy with who I was, and most of all I just wanted to FEEL better. Yes, looking better was definitely a perk that I was wanting (and looking forward to). But at the end of the day, I had enough of living the way I was living and I just wanted to be happy.

That's just it. Just to be happy. Happiness is different for everyone, and honestly if you had asked me a month ago if I was happy - I'd tell you 'yes, I'm happy and I've always been happy'. But that would be a lie. Not a lie that I'm happy, because honestly - I'm probably the happiest that I've ever been. I wasn't always happy though, and that's something that I forgot.. until recently.



Two weeks ago I accidentally found an old video on my computer that I recorded in January 2011 - two months before I moved to Vancouver with Amanda. Maybe someday I'll be ready to show that video to everyone, but not yet. However, what I will share with you is the screen-cap (above) of this girl. When I watched this video (which I recorded for 'future me') I was blown away and shocked. I felt so sad for that girl. I honestly didn't even remember recording this video and I didn't remember that I had ever felt that way. I asked myself that if future me was thinner and healthier, to never ever go back. I just, I have no words. This is the motivation that I didn't know that I needed in order to get myself on track.

I don't know if it's a good idea or a terrible idea, but I use myself as motivation. Before you think I'm crazy, allow me to explain... I use old pictures, videos, heck - even things I've written, as motivation to push myself further and to never go back. Seeing how far I've come amazes me. I'm not trying to boast or sound cocky (actually the exact opposite) because I know I am only half way to my goal. But I celebrate my small victories, I celebrate my life that I'm taking back, and I celebrate the confidence that I've gained.


This is the same shirt (in the three pics above). I've owned it for years and now it practically falls off me - but I've kept it so I can continue to see my progress. The picture on the left is from 2 years ago, the picture in the middle was taken last night, and the picture on the right is from 3 years ago. This shirt truly didn't fit me when I used to wear it ( and I wore it all.the.time.), but I loved it and thought I looked good. I was delusional, and I can see that now.

Anyway... I could say a lot more, but I've rambled far too long. I will end this here and I will pick up next time when I do a 4th edition of The Vulnerable Truth. I truly thank every single one of you who have encouraged me, inspired me, and helped me with this journey. The support that I've gotten has been so overwhelming and it's more than I ever could've expected and it has been motivation for me to keep going.

Why I Don't Go Clubbing

I'm not going to lie to you, I can party.
I don't 'go hard' anymore, you know... because I'm trying to lose weight and trying to be responsible.
But, in my day (ha, I say this like I'm old), I have been known to be able to party hard. There may or may not have been one night where I consumed 28 shots. I'm pretty sure that Stephanie is the only one who would appreciate (or be proud of me for) that feat. I digress...


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I seriously love dancing. Love it. But ONLY when I'm alone. I'm a horrible, horrible, horrible dancer and I know it.
I can't handle dancing in front of other people (I'm pretty sure I just devastated Helene by saying this. Homegirl can DANCE). I can honestly tell you that I've only danced in front of other people maybe a dozen or two dozen times, max. I just don't do it. If I'm going to go out for a night of drinking with my friends, it's not at a club. I'd prefer a bar or pub where I can have a chill night with friends. That's just my style.

Warning: This post will be GIF-Heavy, and not safe for dial-up users.
p.s. If you're still using dial-up, I'm silently judging you...

On rare occasions, when I do go clubbing, this is how all of the other girls are dancing:


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Once I've had a few too many drinks, I finally decide to make my way to the dancefloor:


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This how the super drunk girls are trying to get the guys attention:


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This is how I try to get the guys attention:


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The hot girls in the middle of the dance floor... The ones that all the guys are looking at:


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I'm dancing in the corner, hoping that nobody is looking at me:


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Some girls dance on the bar:


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I can't even dance walk in heels:


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Some girls twerk on the dancefloor:


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This is how I twerk it:


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Lets face it, even the guys can dance better than me:


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I wish that I could tell you that some of this post was an exaggeration, but it's not. So, friends and blog readers, please for goodness sake - DO NOT INVITE ME TO GO DANCING. I will need far too much alcohol and I will embarrass you and probably myself in the entire process. Just don't.

I'll leave you with this pretty little visual for you all. When I'm having dance parties, alone, this is what I think that I look like:


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In reality, I'm pretty sure that this is what I look like. Actually, I possibly look worse than this:


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The Vulnerable Truth 2.0

I'm going to get real with y'all today. I usually like to keep it light and fluffy around here, but not today. If you're looking for a laugh, please return tomorrow when I will have a Father's Day post from my dad.

As some of you may or may not remember, I wrote a pretty serious blog post two months ago called
THE VULNERABLE TRUTH. This blog post was terrifying to me. I finally admitted to myself (and the world), in writing, what I had been denying for years.

I'M FAT.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it. It's a fact, Jack.



I'm not going to lie to you - this shit is hard.

I knew it wasn't going to be sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops; but I wasn't really prepared for the mental battle that I'd be facing.

The first month of my 'new lifestyle' wasn't a whole lot different than what I had previously been doing. Yes, I made changes. Instead of buying lunches 4x per week I was maybe buying it once, or not at all. Yes, I 'worked out' aka I would go for a walk/run - meaning I would do intervals of walking and running. Usually more walking than running, but it was better than nothing.

However, I would still eat toast or a bagel for breakfast every day of the work week.
I would still go out with my friends on Friday night, Saturday and Saturday night and sometimes Sunday (brunch).
I'd have 2-3, or more, drinks when I was out socializing and would think nothing of it.
In my mind, I had admitted that I was fat, therefore I was living a healthier lifestyle. Oh how wrong I was.



I continued to live my lifestyle THE EXACT SAME WAY. I knew this was NOT going to cut it. So I slapped myself mentally and got my butt in gear. No more bread/bagels, no more diet coke, no more oat bars from Starbucks, and no more alcohol. Yep, all of my "fun" foods and drinks GONE. It sucked at first, but it actually made a difference.

I basically was a loser every weekend for the month of May. I wouldn't go out with friends to bars for a drink because I made the decision to cut out alcohol completely. It's not that I can't have fun sober, that's pretty far from the truth. But I didn't trust myself not to cave in and drink with everyone.
I couldn't stomach the thought of working out and then going out for drinks (2 double vodka & diet = 400+ calories). Not to mention any appies or food...
There goes any exercise that I just did. Apart from a few (skinny girl vodka) drinks this past weekend, I haven't had alcohol since April. I'm going to stay on my no-alcohol kick as long as I can. Ideally until the fall... We'll see how that goes.
I just realized that I sound like an alcoholic, but I promise I'm not.

Something that I've learned about myself in this short process is that I've got a lot of mental struggles around losing weight.
I've got the food prep part down, I could be better with some of my food choices but I'm taking it one day at a time.
I'm working out a lot more than I was before - I'm working out 5 days a week now and have noticed a huge increase in my ability to do certain exercises.

But mentally, it's like I'm getting worse instead of improving. Everyone has self doubt, I get that... But for some reason, this is the hardest part of this battle for me. I'm pretty sure that my journey is 40% food, 10% physical activity and 50% mentality. I have noticed time and time again that my head tells me to stop long before my legs, arms, or lungs tell me to stop. And I DON'T KNOW WHY.

One of the hardest things for me to get past is letting people see me workout/sweat. I have friends that try and include me in their healthy lifestyles, but I always find a way to say no. A few examples...

Going for a walk - what if I'm out of breath after only a few blocks and they judge me?
Going for a run - what if I can't run as far and they think I'm weak for wanting to do walking/running intervals.
Going for a hike - what if I am the first one to get tired?
Yoga - what if I fart in class? No seriously, I've thought about this one before.
Zumba - white girls don't have rhythm. I don't want anyone seeing my fat jiggle while I dance/jump around.
Going to the gym - no way, everyone will judge me.

I could go on, but you get the picture. My friends know that I'm trying to lose weight and they will try and include me in their physical activity but I ALWAYS decline. I even had my roommate, Amanda, show me some kettlebell workouts that I could do at home - and I wouldn't even do the moves in front of her so she could check my form.

I'm so uncomfortable with people watching me workout or seeing me sweat that it's almost as if I've formed a complex about it. I don't even go for runs/walks in my neighborhood anymore because I don't want anyone seeing me. When I used to run, I would only go down the alleys. In my mind, this meant that nobody could see me or judge my lack of running abilities.
For the record, I don't know a single person in my neighborhood - they are ALL strangers, yet I worry about them judging me. Why?

I'm extremely jealous of the people who want to lose weight and immediately join the gym and/or hire a personal trainer to help them achieve their fitness goals. I feel like I'm the only person who needs to workout, alone, in the quiet of my own home.
If you think I'm being dramatic, I won't even work out if Amanda is home - we have been best friends for most of our lives, yet I still don't want to be out of breath and sweaty in front of her. What if she sees my workout and judges me for how little I'm doing? Again, these thoughts are insane... I know.

Last night I had an epiphany about this when I went for a walk, I ended up at the park and sat on a bench for about 10 minutes. I was mentally trying to get up the courage to run intervals in the park - I looked around about eleventy billion times to see if anyone was watching me, but I couldn't muster up the courage to do it. I wouldn't let myself leave the park until I ran one 'circuit' around a group of trees and did 25 squats. The moment I finished this 'task', I hightailed it out of the park, just in case anyone saw me. I didn't want to be judged.



This is where I'm at now, friends. I'm probably about 50lbs down from my heaviest weight (I don't know how big I got because I avoided scales at all costs). I am officially down 30lbs from the highest number that I ever remember seeing on the scale.
I went from not being able to do 5 sit-ups without back pain flaring up, to doing 50 sit-ups during a workout (usually 5 reps of 10).
I went from doing no squats, to doing 75 squats and not being able to walk for THREE DAYS, to being able to do 1,000 squats in four days.
These may not be big feats to anyone in the fitness world, but these are my feats and I'm damn proud of them.

I made the decision to write today's (super long, I'm sorry) post because I needed to get these words out of my head and stare at them on this blank page. Every day will be a struggle and I'm fully prepared to handle that - but I needed to document how I'm feeling at this exact moment.

Who knows, maybe a few months from now I will be able to say that this was the old me.

The Vulnerable Truth

Happy Thursday my loves.
Today I'm going to get real with y'all...
Last time I was this real was when I did The Ugly Truth post.

This post has been sitting on blogger as a 'draft' for quite some time because I didn't want to post it. Heck, a huge part of me still doesn't want to post it - but it's time to be honest with myself (and apparently the whole interwebz, no big deal). I'm going to warn you now, this is going to be long.
Okay, so here we go.

I'm fat.

Okay, so that wasn't as hard to say as I had expected - phew.

Here's the thing, I have been overweight my ENTIRE life. I was raised in a house where food was cooked with 'love' (butter, fatty oils, etc). Lots and lots of love. My parents changed the foods we ate when I was 16 and we started eating much healthier versions of the fatty foods we has previously consumed on a daily basis. Goodbye white bread, hello whole wheat bread. Goodbye ground beef, hello extra lean ground beef (or chicken, or turkey).

I had never really considered dieting until I was 19-20, which is when I told myself I'd 'start on Monday' every friggin' week. Seriously, I would tell myself every week that it would be my last week of eating fast food, or sitting on my ass butt at home, being lazy. 'Next week is the start of a whole new me' I'd tell myself, ALL of the time. I tried not to vocalize this to anyone because it made it easier when Monday rolled around and I decided I wanted to eat fast food for lunch. Now as much as I'd love to push the blame off on anyone else for why I became so fat, I really have NOBODY to blame but myself. I know this. Don't worry mom, I'm not blaming you!

I came from a family where everyone was big, so I felt okay with who I was. I was raised in a house with so much love. The amount of love, affection, and protection that my Mom & Dad have for my brother and I is like nothing I've ever seen. I was taught (from a young age) to love myself, so I did. So what if I was 25, 50, or even 100 lbs heavier than my classmates or my friends? If it didn't matter to my friends or family, it didn't matter to me - and that was that. Yes, I got bullied. I've been called every name that you can possibly imagine and I quickly adapted to the mentality of 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me'. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it didn't hurt, because it did. I'm also not going to sit here and tell you that I even attempted to do anything about it, because I didn't. By the time I realized that I really should lose weight, I had TWO DECADES of bad habits under my belt.


This was me, through and through. I wanted it... but not badly enough to DO anything about it.

Instead of taking care of myself and changing my lifestyle when I was 20 years old (like I obviously should have done), I started eating more. I guess you could say I was an emotional eater. I would typically eat when I was bored - not when I was sad, angry, etc. Boredom is what caused me to eat. How absolutely ridiculous is that? Who eats out of BOREDOM?! The worst part is that I didn't even care what I was consuming. I would eat anything and everything, it really didn't matter to me. Instead of my weight going down, it just kept going up, and up, and up until I officially hit my heaviest weight at the age of 21. I can't believe I'm about to post this publicly, but this was me on my 21st birthday. Woof.



When I think about where I was at this point in my life - I was just sad. On the outside I was happy, and I've always been the 'funny girl', but inside - a large part of me felt numb. So numb, and so bored... so I ate. I ate, and ate, and ate. I didn't even like food - I actually hated food, but that didn't stop me from eating it. I'm pretty sure it made me eat even more. When I think about it, it makes me sad that I couldn't see what I was doing to myself - but as they say:
Ignorance is BLISS.

Just after my 22nd birthday, my best friend (Amanda) and I decided that we wanted to flip our worlds upside down and move across the country. We literally changed EVERYTHING that we knew about our lives, packed up and moved 6,000km away to the other side of the world country. Everything that was familiar to me was gone in an instant. When I got to Vancouver I didn't have a car (or anyone to drive me anywhere), or a job. This meant I needed to walk or take the bus anywhere I wanted to go. This was new to me - when I lived at home I drove everywhere. I worked a 20 minute walk from my house for FIVE YEARS but drove to work every day. The comfort of a car (or having someone drive me anywhere) was gone.

I was no longer living with my parents, which meant that I was now cooking every meal for myself - every day. Instead of my mom doing the grocery shopping and constantly having a supply of my favorite foods on hand whenever I wanted, I actually needed to go shopping and buy this stuff for myself. The catch was that I had to go grocery shopping with Amanda, my best friend - the health nut. Obviously I couldn't exactly buy a bag of chips, frozen food, or cookies in front of her - so I bought healthy food. After a few months of buying healthy food to show her that I'm not always such a fat ass, these habits actually started to stick. I started loving a lot of these healthier foods, and found myself no longer drawn to the unhealthy crap that I had become so accustomed to eating. Also, since moving to Vancouver - I discovered that I'm lactose intolerant. There was a 3 month period of time where I was literally sick to my stomach every day and thought it was 'normal'. Nope, not normal. It just so 'happened' that I had lactose intolerance...

So, this new lifestyle (actually walking places and eating healthier food) helped me lose a good chunk of weight in the past two years, since moving here! I don't know what my weight was when I moved here, and I don't know what my weight is now, but I feel better and I look better. Here is a side by side comparison of where I was, and where I am now:



I'm happy to say that I've managed to drop between 3-4 pant sizes since moving to Vancouver, and that's only from changing my lifestyle. I can assure you that I definitely have not been 'trying' to lose weight. I was just a wisher, dreamer, and insanely hopeful that the weight would 'fall off'.
Don't worry guys - I'm no longer in denial.


This is where I am today, friends.
I'm not longer wishing or dreaming to be healthy. I'm doing it.

Obviously, I'm still a big girl. I know that I have a lot of work ahead of me, but that's what this post is all about.
I need to make this public. So here we go:

Dear friends, family, WORLD;
I promise that the girl on the left (comparison photo) will NEVER be back, and the girl on the right will soon be gone. I promise to work towards the goals that I'm setting for myself, and I'm prepared to work for every pound that I need to lose. I don't want to be 'skinny', I just want to be healthy. I will fall off the tracks sometimes and have 'cheat days', but I promise that 'cheat days' won't turn into 'cheat weeks' or 'cheat months'. I promise that the blood, sweat, and tears will be worth it, and I promise that I won't let any of you down.
All my love,
Faith